The Nursing Faculty Job Search: Where to Look, What to Ask, and Red Flags to Watch For

If you've been scrolling your social media feeds lately, you've noticed a theme: NPs and nurses at every level posting about their search for faculty roles. Some are looking at undergraduate programs. Some want graduate or NP education specifically. Most of them are describing the same experience of applying, waiting, hearing nothing, or getting to the final round and losing out to an internal candidate.

And yet the faculty shortage is real and well-documented. So what's actually going on in nursing faculty job searches?

The Paradox Nobody Talks About

There is simultaneously a nursing faculty shortage and a competitive job market for faculty positions. These two things are not mutually exclusive, and understanding why they coexist is the first step to navigating the search more strategically.

In 2022, nursing schools reported approximately 1,800 vacant faculty positions which is a key figure that limits program expansion. More than one-third of nursing faculty members are over the age of 60, with many expected to retire in the next few years, which only deepens the shortfall. At the same time, despite the growing need for nurses, there were over 65,000 qualified student applicants being turned away from nursing programs in 2023, largely due to insufficient faculty.

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So why isn't it easy to walk into one of those vacant seats?

The degree requirement bottleneck. The biggest structural barrier is credentialing. Approximately 80% of all open faculty positions require or prefer candidates to hold a terminal degree (DNP, PhD, EdD), creating an additional hurdle since the pool of doctorally-prepared nurses remains limited. If you have an MSN but not a DNP or PhD, you may be screened out before your application reaches a human. Some institutions (particularly vocational programs or community colleges teaching pre-licensure programs) are more flexible here, but at the graduate level, a doctorate degree is increasingly a non-negotiable.

The salary gap makes positions hard to fill and hard to justify. The median salary across APRN roles is around $120-130,000 in many cases, while the median salary for professors in schools of nursing is around $93,000 (but will significantly vary across institution type and faculty rank). Schools struggle to attract candidates because the pay doesn't compete with clinical work, but institutional budget structures and internal equity concerns make it hard to raise salaries quickly. Many academic institutions are constrained by across-the-board salary policies and concerns about equity across departments, making it difficult to prioritize higher pay for nursing faculty without generating internal tension.

Personal viewpoint: Another way to look at this is to recognize that I do not have the same liability as a nursing faculty as I do as a nurse practitioner. As a nursing faculty, I am not prescribing medications and making medical decisions for patients. While my work as a faculty member is important, and I should be compensated fairly, I also recognize that that compensation will not be the same as a clinical provider.

Budget constraints and internal pipelines. "Vacant" doesn't always mean "actively funded." Some positions sit open because the budget allocation is frozen, or because the program is quietly hoping an existing adjunct will step into the role without the cost and process of a national search. Internal candidates often have an invisible leg up that's never disclosed in the posting.

Geographic mismatch. Most full-time faculty roles, especially at the graduate level, still require at least some on-site presence for labs, simulations, committee work, and accreditation visits. If you live in a market without a lot of NP programs nearby, fully remote graduate faculty positions exist but are highly competitive precisely because they're accessible to anyone in the country.

The federal policy environment is adding new pressure. Proposed changes to how nursing programs are categorized could reduce borrowing limits for DNP students, and proposals to eliminate loan forgiveness for faculty service create a double constraint. This isn't just a pipeline problem for the future; it's a disincentive.

TLDR: the shortage is real, but it's structural. The positions that are funded, at the level you're qualified for, in a location that works for you is a much narrower pool than the number of vacancies implies.

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Where to Actually Look (And How to Get Noticed Before You Apply)

Most people searching for faculty positions start with Indeed or LinkedIn. That's fine, but it's not where the best listings live. More importantly, applying cold to job postings is one of the least effective strategies in academic hiring. Here's where to focus your energy, and how to build the kind of presence that makes programs want to find you.

HigherEdJobs.com is the gold standard for academic faculty postings. It's where most universities list positions first, often before they appear anywhere else. Set up an account, enable alerts for nursing faculty, and filter by program type (graduate vs. undergraduate). It's free for job seekers!

The ANA Career Center (jobs.ana.org) and the NLN and NONPF websites post faculty positions regularly, and these tend to skew toward graduate-level and advanced practice programs.

University websites directly. Don't underestimate going straight to the source. If there's a school of nursing you're genuinely interested in, bookmark their HR or faculty opportunities page and check it regularly. Positions sometimes appear there before they hit the broader job boards.

LinkedIn is increasingly useful, not just for job postings, but for visibility. If your profile clearly positions you as a clinician-educator, recruiters from nursing programs can find you. Connect with nursing faculty at programs you're interested in. Engage thoughtfully with posts in the nursing education space. Relationships built online become referrals faster than you might expect.

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Build Visibility Before You Need a Job

Academia is relationship-driven in a way that clinical hiring simply isn't. That means the work of getting hired often starts well before you're actively searching.

Present at conferences. NONPF, NLN, and regional nursing education conferences are where faculty gather. Presenting a poster or a podium session puts you in the same rooms as program directors and search committee chairs. You don't need a groundbreaking research agenda to present. Do you have a quality improvement project from your clinical work, a case study relevant to NP education, or a session on a clinical topic you know cold? Those are all legitimate contributions. Do this while you're still in your doctoral program if you can and make those connections!

Publish. Peer-reviewed publications carry weight in academic hiring, but you don't need to be in a top-tier journal to demonstrate scholarly engagement. Open-access nursing education journals, clinical practice journals, and even invited contributions to professional organization newsletters start to build a record. A CV with work in scholarship column is a huge boost, especially at most four-year institutions.

Join professional organizations and be visible within them. Getting involved at the organizational level by reviewing abstracts, serving on a task force, or contributing to position statements puts you in professional community with the people who do the hiring.

Stay connected to your own program. If you are currently in a doctoral program or recently graduated from a master’s or doctoral program, chance are that the faculty know or remember you. They know your work ethic, your clinical background, your teaching instincts from the seminars and presentations you've done as a student. If you've made a strong impression, that network is more valuable than any job board. Stay in touch after graduation. Let them know you're looking. Ask if they know of programs that are hiring or might need adjunct support.

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Use Preclinical Precepting and Adjunct Teaching as a Strategic Entry Point

Clinical precepting is more visible than you think. Preceptors who are engaged, responsive, and who communicate well with program coordinators get noticed. NP programs have to work hard to maintain their clinical networks, so a preceptor who takes the relationship seriously, mentors students well, and stays in touch with the program is someone the program wants to keep close. Many full-time faculty started as preceptors for the very program that eventually hired them. If you're already precepting for a program you'd like to teach in, treat that relationship as part of your professional positioning, not just a service obligation.

Adjunct teaching is the most direct pipeline. Teaching one course as an adjunct gives you academic experience on your CV and name recognition inside a program. When a full-time position opens, an adjunct who has been reliably excellent is a known quantity in a process that otherwise requires a lot of inference.

Be intentional about which programs you pursue. Adjuncting for a program you have no interest in joining full-time is fine as experience, but if your goal is a full-time role at a specific institution, that's where you want your adjunct foot in the door.

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Red Flags to Watch For

Faculty burnout is a documented crisis. Systematic reviews indicate that most nursing faculty experience moderate to high burnout, with exhaustion, role strain, and moral distress linked to heavy workloads, lack of recognition, and systemic inequities. The patterns that predict that outcome are often visible before you accept the offer, if you know what to look for.

The position has been posted multiple times. If you Google the job title and institution and find postings from two and three years ago, the role has turnover. That's worth understanding before you accept.

The job description reads like three jobs. Some postings list so many required responsibilities that no single person could fulfill them in 40 hours a week. That's not aspirational. It's a preview of your actual workload.

High adjunct-to-full-time ratio. Ask what percentage of courses are taught by adjunct or part-time faculty. A program heavily dependent on adjuncts isn't necessarily a bad place to work, but it can signal budget constraints, instability, or a culture where full-time faculty absorb the administrative load that adjuncts don't carry.

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A Few Final Thoughts

The nursing faculty job market rewards people who are visible, connected, and strategic. If you're in a doctoral program now, start building those relationships before you graduate. Present, publish if you can, precept intentionally, and let people know where you want to go. The search feels impossible when you're applying cold into a quiet inbox. It feels very different when you've spent a year or two making yourself known in the spaces where hiring decisions actually get made.

The shortage is real. The seats are out there. The search just requires more intentionality than most of us expect when we make the transition from clinician to educator.

Jacklyn DelPrete, EdD, CRNP, FNP-C is a family nurse practitioner, full-time graduate nursing faculty member, and founder of The Elevated NP. Questions or topics you'd like covered? Reach out at elevatednpteam@gmail.com.